


In Vino Jocunditas

by servantofclio



Series: Aderyn Hawke [8]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Alcohol, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-11
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-26 02:50:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6220657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/servantofclio/pseuds/servantofclio
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Hawke is (usually) a happy drunk and falls all over everyone she knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Vino Jocunditas

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theherocomplex](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theherocomplex/gifts).



In _The Tale of the Champion_ , Hawke drinks frequently and merrily, tossing back quantities of ale and rum and sometimes brandy, enough to make even a Tal-Vashoth pirate blush. 

It’s a lie, mind you. Possibly the least of the lies Varric chose to tell about the Champion, but a lie nonetheless. And sure, Varric wrote _The Tale of the Champion_ to give some humanity to the stories already circulating, to put some flesh and blood and bone back on the stalwart Champion of legend, but some truths, humanizing though they are, just don’t sit right in the story Varric wants to tell. 

The truth is, Hawke can’t hold her liquor, and it’s bad enough that Varric always finds himself a little embarrassed on her behalf. Not because she does anything all that scandalous, but just because it seems sort of... unseemly. She’s a hero and larger than life and she’s also _Fereldan_. A prodigious capacity for alcohol is supposed to be one of the virtues of being an uncouth barbarian dog-lord. 

But not in Hawke’s case. Varric found this out the hard way, not very long into their acquaintance. He’d invited Hawke and her brother both for drinks on his tab, to get to know them better, and he watched, bemused, as the clever mercenary he’d been hearing so much about started giggling uncontrollably on her second glass (Varric’s a good storyteller, all right, but she wasn’t even laughing at the funny parts), and then slid down in her seat and tilted sideways, flopping onto her brother’s gigantic meaty shoulder. 

“Ugh, get off,” said Carver, half-heartedly pushing at her with his elbow. 

Hawke didn’t move. She seemed to have glued herself to her brother’s arm. “No, you,” she said, and dissolved into helpless laughter. 

Carver rolled his eyes and took a swig from his own glass. “She’ll be useless now,” he informed Varric. “Hope you weren’t planning to talk about anything important.” 

“I can see that,” Varric said, fascinated. 

“Seriously, sister, _move_.” Carver made a somewhat more successful attempt to shove her away. 

Hawke clutched at his arm. “Noooo, you have to save me from uncle Gamlen!” She fell over again, her forehead banging into Carver’s shoulder. 

“Maybe you should take her home, junior,” Varric suggested. 

Carver glared at him balefully across the table before sighing and draining his glass. “Suppose you’re right. Come along, sis, up you get.” He stood, having no difficulty in hauling the still-giggling woman with him. Varric shook his head as Carver steered his sister out the door. 

That was only the first time. Fortunately, Hawke knew her limits, and ordinarily confined herself to one drink, or just possibly two, nursed slowly over the course of the evening. 

Even so, she overindulged from time to time. The next time, it was Aveline that Hawke ended up gracelessly leaning against, giggling at nothing and blinking into space. Varric hid his smile of amusement behind his mug. It was the first time the others had seen this particular display, and their reactions were priceless. Anders was staring, with a baffled expression, while Fenris frowned at Hawke under his long ragged fringe of white hair. Merrill tilted her head and smiled back at Hawke. Isabela simply chuckled and leaned back in her chair, planting a booted foot on the edge of the table. 

“Well, you’re a fun drunk, aren’t you, Hawke?” 

“’M not drunk,” Hawke protested, convincing no one. 

“You absolutely are,” said Aveline, who still sat rock-solid and upright, even with Hawke’s entire weight flopped against her. 

“I am not!” Hawke attempted to straighten herself, only to overbalance and slide into Merrill, sitting at her other side. 

“Oops, hello, Hawke!” Merrill smiled at Hawke, whose chin was now planted on Merrill’s shoulder. 

“Hello,” Hawke said. “Whoops, sorry!” 

Merrill somehow managed to brace Hawke back up with a slim but surprisingly sinewy arm. Aveline, without looking, reached out and helped tug Hawke into a vaguely upright position. Hawke blinked around the table. 

“You know,” she said, “I might have had a little too much.” 

Anders snorted. Isabela laughed right out loud. Even Fenris seemed to have the faintest trace of a smile, though it disappeared before Varric could be sure. 

“Time to get you home, Hawke,” Aveline proclaimed, pulling Hawke to her feet as she stood herself. 

Over time, just about everyone, by sheer proximity to Hawke, ended up the recipient of a certain amount of drunken leaning. When it happened to Merrill, the two of them tended to end up giggling together over whatever had tickled Hawke’s fancy. 

Anders, the one time it happened to him, flinched and stared down at Hawke flopped against his shoulder as if he were a hunted man. Varric tensed and wondered whether he should intervene. He’d spent far too long watching Blondie stare at Hawke like water in the desert. He wasn’t even sure it was desire, really, or at least not for anything as simple as sex or even affection. He thought more that Hawke represented something aspirational for the other mage — freedom, maybe. Something that Anders didn’t have and wasn’t sure he ever would. 

Isabela moved before Varric, though; she tugged on Hawke’s arm until Hawke was aimed in her direction instead, and said, “Now, now, sweet thing, why don’t you come over here. That one’s a little bony.” 

Anders looked affronted, but sidled a few inches away, hunching his shoulders. 

“He’s not!” Hawke protested, and blinked. “But you’re very comfor- comf- comfy, Bela.” 

“That’s right,” Isabela said, slinging an arm around Hawke’s shoulders. “You come lean on me any time, Hawke.” 

Hawke sighed and somehow managed to fall asleep — well, Rivaini _was_ amply cushy, Varric couldn’t deny that — and they had to wake her up before somebody could walk her home. Anders, Varric noted, made a point of sitting not directly next to Hawke, after that. 

Even Sebastian had his turn one night; one moment Hawke was laughing hysterically at something Merrill had said, and the next moment her cheek was pressed to his armored shoulder. She looked like she wasn’t quite sure how that had happened. 

“Oops,” she said. “Sorry, Sebastian.” 

“It’s quite all right, Hawke,” he said mildly, taking a sip of his own drink. 

“I hope Andraste doesn’t mind,” she said, with a wary look at the man’s belt. 

Sebastian chuckled. “I’m sure Andraste would understand.” 

Varric had to admit the Choirboy handled that one with grace, completely unperturbed by Hawke slumping against him and commenting on the whiteness of his armor and now he must spend a lot of time polishing it. 

Fenris, though, by some chance, managed to avoid Hawke’s attentions. Well, Varric amended... probably not chance. The elf normally sat on the opposite side of the table from Hawke, as Varric himself did, so he was seldom in position to catch Hawke when she started toppling over. 

He watched her, though. With bafflement, often, in those first few years, as if Hawke were a puzzle he hadn’t yet figured out how to solve. Over time, the elf’s natural wariness eased, and he played at cards and dice with the rest of them, and showed an astounding deftness with dry quips. 

Over time, too, the way he looked at Hawke changed. Varric couldn’t quite pinpoint when it happened, but slowly, in the years after Hawke and her mother moved into the old Amell estate, he saw it: the looks that lingered, Fenris’ occasional distraction from a hand of cards, the way he jerked his eyes away when he thought he’d been looking too long. 

But Hawke was looking back, too, watching Fenris while he scowled at his cards, her gaze drifting across the table more often than not. They both tended to lose the thread of a conversation when their eyes met, and Hawke’s cheeks often went pink as she looked away. 

Oh, yeah. Varric was familiar with these signs. Not subtle, indeed, the fire that was obviously slowly growing in their midst. 

Until the day it stopped like someone had doused the pair of them with cold water, and Fenris avoided nightly gatherings for two weeks, and when he came back he and Hawke looked everywhere but at each other, and one or the other of them found some excuse to leave early in the evening. 

It wasn’t long after that that they were drinking to Aveline and Donnic, and Hawke was having too much, too fast. Everyone else seemed distracted by ribbing Aveline, so Varric kept an eye on Hawke, working his way over to her. “How are you doing, Hawke?” he asked quietly. 

She laughed, too abruptly and too loud. “I’m fine,” she said. “I’m just really happy for them.” She laughed again, brightly, and rubbed at her eyes. Eyes that were too bright. Varric pretended not to see her scrub the dampness off her hands onto her sleeve. 

“I know,” he said instead, patting her on the back. 

Hawke sighed and slumped all at once, ending up with her head on his shoulder. “Really happy,” she insisted. Her voice wavered. 

“Yup,” Varric said. He hauled her upstairs and let her sleep it off in one of his most comfortable chairs. 

What a change a few years makes: time and a dead Arishok and the title of _Champion_ behind them, and there might be heat in those ashes after all. 

In time, Fenris made his way around the table, moving seat by seat closer to Hawke. A lot of evenings they simply sat, side by side, cards in their hands or just participating in the ebb and flow of conversation. But Varric saw how their arms sometimes brushed against each other, how fingers drifted together when they needed to pass items. Isabela wasn’t there any more to speculate on what might be touching under the table, and the others kept their peace. Varric, too, just watched it build, watched them steal little sideways glances at each other, watched them inch closer and closer together. 

The most relaxed he’d ever seen them: they were all celebrating, and to tell the truth Varric couldn’t even remember _what_ they were celebrating. All the bands of slavers and Tal-Vashoth and street gangs kind of blurred together, after a while. 

But there was Hawke, with a bright peal of laughter to some story of Choirboy’s about noble dissipation, and there was Fenris, actually chuckling as he raised a glass of wine to his lips. And there was Hawke, still laughing, her posture wavering, and there she went: suddenly draped onto the elf’s arm, smiling and pink-cheeked. 

Fenris looked down at her in some surprise, especially when she laughed again and leaned closer. _Snuggling_ , if you wanted to be precise about it. Varric watched him take it in, how happy she was, and that she’d reached that tipping point of Hawke drunkenness that made her flop against the nearest thing. 

Varric would bet any amount of coin you’d care to name that she was happiest to flop on Fenris, though. 

Varric could also see the moment Fenris, a little tipsy himself, shrugged and decided to go with it. He wrapped an arm around Hawke, tucking her up more closely against his side. Varric had to applaud the man’s good sense, in fact: Hawke looked like a soft and curvy and comfortable bundle, and Varric would swear he could see the elf thinking for a second before spreading out his hand on Hawke’s side. Hawke giggled some more and cuddled into him very happily, even more when Fenris smirked a little and his hand slipped toward her hip. Varric kept watching out of the corner of his eye as he talked to the others — watched how Hawke lifted herself up and planted a kiss on Fenris’ cheek, how he turned his head to kiss her forehead, and of course, within a minute they were actually kissing for real, Hawke practically crawling into her elf’s lap. They’d never done that before —well, in public, at least — in all the years Varric had known them. 

Sebastian kept right on talking to Merrill and Aveline, determinedly ignoring the increasingly amorous couple on the other side of the table, even though Merrill was watching with her lips twitching, and Aveline had flushed a dull red. Varric decided to take mercy on her and loudly cleared his throat. 

Hawke and Fenris broke apart. Hawke was blushing and biting her lip, while Fenris was doing that thing where he shook his hair into his eyes so you couldn’t really read his expression. 

“Maybe it’s time somebody walks you home, Hawke?” Varric suggested. 

Hawke blushed even more and ducked her head. Fenris set his glass down on the table. “What a fine idea, Varric.” 

They departed about as quickly as two people could, provided the people in question couldn’t keep their hands away from each other. Varric chuckled as they went, and wasn’t the only one: a ripple of laughter raced around the rest of the table, and Aveline shook her head, smiling indulgently. 

He pondered, later, sliding some form of the story into his accumulated notes, but decided to leave it out. A touch of sentimentality, maybe, but it was a storyteller’s prerogative to leave some details out. He was grateful, at least, that some good things came out of the whole mess of... everything. 

But besides, Hawke’s inability to hold her liquor was still embarrassing. 

Some things just aren’t going in the book.


End file.
